Auto Credit Express Blog
August 22, 2008
Marketing from your File Cabinet
One of the easiest ways to market your business is to use the customer lists that you already have. But many dealers don’t even know these lists exist and miss the opportunity.
Money sitting in the files
Many of us at Auto Credit Express are surprised that many dealers that have special finance departments don’t take advantage of an obvious marketing opportunity from their special finance customers. In fact, once the contract has been cashed, many dealers file the paperwork and never give this opportunity a second thought.
How do you treat these folks?
There are many phrases that dealers use to describe the special finance customer: roaches, bust-outs, credit criminals. To that list, you should add a few more: customer, pay check and bird dog. You should add those last three, because that’s exactly what they could, and should, be.
It’s a given that if you treat a customer with respect, they’ll tell their friends about it and there’s also a very good chance that they’ll come back and buy another car from you. In this regard, special finance customers are no different from your “A” paper customers. This also means that if you really want to be successful with special finance, this is how you will run that department as well.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
So you’re treating them well? Great. Glad to hear it. Now that we’ve crossed that bridge, how are you marketing to the reference list that they gave you as part of stips? It’s a given that all subprime lenders require a list of 6 references as part of the loan requirements. Even if they don’t, you should still make it department policy to ask for references. Why? Because this is a built-in opportunity to really grow both your subprime and your regular business.
It’s true. “Birds of a feather flock together.”
If your customer had bad credit, the chance that one or two of their friends might also be in the same situation is pretty good. Even if the references have good credit, it still makes sense to contact them. After all, customers with good credit need cars too, right? All kidding aside, if you treated your bad credit customer with dignity, he/she is going to really appreciate it. It also makes sense you tell your customer that you will absolutely be contacting the people on the reference list at some point in time and that, in most cases, the lender will, too. This gives the customer a “heads up” to contact each person on the list and let them know about the upcoming call as well as the great treatment they received at your dealership.
How to track the leads on your reference lists
If you have LotProOnline subprime auto software, the built-in CRM system will help you keep track of these valuable leads. It will allow you to print letters as well as email to all the references in your database. You can use the letter templates in the program, or create custom templates of your own. It will also keep track of emails, letters and phone calls as well as allow you to change the status of these leads.
Contact Auto Credit Express
There you have it. It’s a fact that the closing ratio is higher for referrals than walk-in traffic. So don’t spend another day missing out on this great opportunity for additional sales. Contact Auto Credit Express at 888.535.2277 or use our quick contact form.
